![]() "Well, I wasn't doing anything," Butts later recalled. The boredom of unemployment helped fuel Butts. Scrabble, as chronicled by Stefan Fatsis in his tome Word Freak, was the 1938 brainchild of Alfred Mosher Butts, who built his game off of a previous game he had invented called Lexiko. Scrabble was invented by a bored, unemployed man. And with many people out of work, there was more time to kill than ever. But unlike previous economic crashes, indoor lighting was more ubiquitous during the Great Depression and offered a boon to the indoor recreation world. Sort of a release from the tensions of everyday life.”īoard games in America date back to the earliest Native American communities and became more commercially marketed in the mid-19th century as Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers grew their respective businesses in Salem, Massachusetts. “The player can always say to himself, ‘I’m going to get the better of the other guy.’ People also can play Monopoly without it being the end of the world. It appeals to the competitive nature of people,” he said. The game not only provided cheap entertainment, it also offered a psychological elixir, as Parker said, it gave people “a feeling of wealth.” “But what kept it going is the chance for individual gain. So they stayed home and played Monopoly.” ![]() Edward Parker, the grandnephew of the game company founder, George Parker, recalled years later, “During the Depression, people did not have enough money to go out to the shows. One Monopoly board can keep a family occupied for many evenings, a plus considering the budget-stretching demands of the moment.Īnother theory: People stayed in. Board games are relatively cheap, reusable and can entertain a wide age range. Then, and now, there are many reasons why board games remain a bright spot in economic downturns, typically bleak spots for retailers. With most American household budgets buckling, it felt only logical to game industry executives that retail, particularly for diversionary products, would plunge along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. No one felt more surprised by the board game boom at the time than Parker Brothers executives. Board games offered budget-friendly entertainment. ![]() Nor was Monopoly’s success isolated it echoed a broader trend of board games flourishing during the Great Depression. Why, in a time of great financial despair, would families and friends want to gather around and swap cash and real estate? Ironically, its inventor made very little off the iconic game. It’s a rendition of that game which was sold to Parker Brothers during the Depression and became a commercial success, saving the company from the brink of bankruptcy. Her game spread throughout left-wing political circles for decades, until a version of it made its way into the hands of the Quakers in Atlantic City in the early 1930s. ![]() Magie, Monopoly’s originator, first received her patent in 1904 for the Landlord’s Game, which she designed to teach the world about the evils of capitalism. ![]()
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